Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Doctoral Certificate in Collaborative Humanities

Promoting forms of cross-disciplinary work and community oriented toward the most challenging questions facing humanities research today

Doctoral Certificate in Collaborative Humanities

Promoting forms of cross-disciplinary work and community oriented toward the most challenging questions facing humanities research today

Collaboration is built through research practices dedicated to thinking together across disciplines and geographical locations. The Doctoral Certificate in Collaborative Humanities program advances forms of inquiry through teaching models and student practices that experiment with group presentations, collaborative online discussions, co-authored seminar papers, and other forms of intellectual partnership.

The program is part of the Collaborative Humanities Initiative and is directed by Amanda Anderson, Director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities and Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English.

Objectives

An expanded sense of intellectual community for doctoral students in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.
An intensive form of interdisciplinary training, with emphasis on collaborative research, critical reflection on humanistic methods, and the development of collaborative skills.
A valuable and distinctive credential for graduate students to advance their professional careers.

337

doctoral students

enrolled in one or more collaborative humanities seminars as of May 2025

25

student home departments

represented by all course participants

74

certificate recipients

as of May 2025

61

collaboratively taught seminars

between fall 2017 and spring 2025

64

Brown University faculty members

between fall 2017 and spring 2025

27

faculty home departments and programs

represented between fall 2017 and spring 2025

Requirements

The Doctoral Certificate in Collaborative Humanities entails the completion of four courses and participation in the Collaborative Public Workshop, an event that concludes the program’s capstone seminar each spring. HMAN 2400-level seminars are open to all students at the same time as they fulfill a requirement of the certificate.

Three HMAN 2400-level seminars must be completed for credit. These seminars are organized around a key interdisciplinary topic, with an emphasis on theoretical and methodological questions. Collaborations are built into the course requirements and may include group presentations, collaborative online discussions, co-authored seminar papers as well as other forms of intellectual partnership.

Courses in the HMAN 2400 series are open to all students at the same time as they fulfill a requirement of the certificate. The completion of two seminars in the HMAN 24*** series is a prerequisite to apply for enrollment in the certificate and the capstone Project Development Workshop.

Taught in the spring semesters, the Project Development Workshop follows the completion of at least two seminars in the HMAN 24*** series and admission to the certificate program.

Projects in development for this workshop can be individual or collaborative and might include a dissertation chapter, an article on method/theory, or a stand-alone essay related to the larger field. All those enrolling will submit a proposed project and formal application to the certificate program before the start of the semester.

In addition to workshop sessions on projects, students perform a number of collateral academic roles: for example, they might nominate and introduce a key text considering larger questions of disciplinary and interdisciplinary method that was formative for their scholarly development; they might serve as first questioners for papers workshopped by others; and they might interview one of their peers and prepared an introduction to their work.

On a first-come, first-served basis, participants in the Project Development Workshop can choose to be in residence in Andrews House for the full academic year, with a desk in a shared office space.

The semester concludes with the annual Collaborative Public Workshop in which students offer public presentations of their project and enter in conversation with Brown University faculty and scholarly guest respondents.

By providing training and preparation for roles that are crucial to the practice and fabric of academic life, yet are seldom the object of formal study and reflection, the Project Development Workshop reimagines the conditions and extends the limits of an interdisciplinary and collaborative research space.

Collaborative Public Workshop 2025

This event celebrated the work of 10 Brown University Ph.D. candidates completing the Doctoral Certificate in Collaborative Humanities and featured presentations of their innovative and timely work. Included were commentaries from scholars Susan Bernstein (Brown University), David L. Eng (University of Pennsylvania), Elizabeth A. Povinelli (Columbia University), and Leela Prasad (Brown University).

Admission to the Certificate

Doctoral students can enroll in the certificate program at any point in time. Admissions are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Students interested in participating in the Project Development Workshop, taught each spring, must seek admission by the fall of the same academic year at the latest. Workshop participants who would like to be in residence at the institute and have desk space assigned to them should consider applying early as assignments are made on a first-come, first-served basis.

Applicants for the Cogut Doctoral Certificates Fellowship must also enroll in the certificate program before or at the same time as they submit the fellowship application materials in the spring.

Apply for admission

Cogut Collaborative Humanities Fellowship

The fellowship supports doctoral students at any stage of their pursuit of the certificate. Students can hold the fellowship in the third, fourth, or fifth year of their doctoral program.

Selected Publications by Fellows

Many Collaborative Humanities Fellows have developed their research from the doctoral certificate program into publications in major academic journals.

Explore publications